What is (setq gnus-fetch-old-headers number) supposed to do? (was: Gnus always downloads 19Mb headers)

[Reiner Steib <4uce.02.r.steib@gmx.net>]

On Thu, Jun 06 2002, Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE (Kai wrote:

> Reiner Steib <4uce.02.r.steib@gmx.net> writes:
>
>> I've experimented with setting it to a number, say N. Then, Gnus only
>> seemed to fetch old headers, if there were less than N articles in
>> this group (total number of articles). But maybe my impression wrong.
>> Is this how it's supposed to work?
>
> I think it's supposed to always fetch N old headers, unless the group
> has less than N articles (then it fetches all headers).

This is what I expected to see, too.

It would be very nice to have something like this (don't know if it's
possible):

1. Fetch unread (and ticked) articles.
2. Look at the References and fetch at most N old (parent-) articles of
   those articles.

> It doesn't make sense for it to fetch no old headers at all in large
> groups.

I switched back to (setq gnus-fetch-old-headers 2000) now. In some
groups (or even some threads?) I see old headers and in others not,
though there should be some very recent parent articles. E.g. here in
gnus.emacs.gnus I see:

  +[  16: Kai Großjohann      ] Re: Gnus always downloads 19Mb headers
O  [  24: Armin Lambacher     ] Re: strange error message with imap
O +  [  11: those who know me ha] 
O      [  17: Armin Lambacher     ] 
O +      [  17: those who know me ha] 
           [  37: Armin Lambacher     ] 
O +  [  24: Simon Josefsson     ] 
O      [ 156: Armin Lambacher     ] 
O +      [  33: Simon Josefsson     ] 
           [  14: Armin Lambacher     ] 
  +[  19: Kai Großjohann      ] Re: nnimap and split with parent
   [  35: Uli Wortmann        ] Re: gnus/nnimap behaviour in case of [...]

I would expect to see (at least some of) the parents of _both_ of your
articles Kai, as the parents are from today, so they definitively are
within the value 2000 of gnus-fetch-old-headers. The highest article
number for g.e.g is around 22162. Changing gnus-fetch-old-headers to
30000 and re-entering the group also didn't show me all expected
parents. I can't see any systematic behavior. :-(

Bye, Reiner.
-- 
       ,,,
      (o o)
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